Personal assessment of the resource is essential to understanding the proposal

I suggest our younger policy advisors fly over strips of relevant country to gain their own impression of current land management practice versus progressive deforestation, rates of change etc.

Using this much faster low-resolution tool as I did to catch up on the current timber industry and a few other things like mining and hydro can be easier.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=bell+bay+tamar+valley&sll=-41.090842,146.812711&sspn=0.001561,0.003648&ie=UTF8&ll=-41.170901,146.918278&spn=0.09252,0.233459&t=k&z=12&om=0

Drag it east west coast to coast in thin strips. Remember the western half has virtually no agricultural soils as shown by the white gravel roads. Thanks OLO for the tip

Dear Baz,

You're absolutely correct as to my surname (Wadsley). The 'onlineopinion' fashion seemed to be for first names and I was happy to oblige. I post under 'Alex Wadsley' on TasmanianTimes.com where you can catch my regular discussion contribution (and from where Alan's opinion piece was linked).

The full Australian Risk Audit report can be seen at:
http://tas.greens.org.au/publications/submissions/2006Sep25-SUBMISSION-PULP_MILL_DRAFT_IIS-VOLUME_2-web.pdf

It is well worth a read for a quick overview of the risks, combining my project finance and economic experience with the science and engineering expertise of my father, Prof Andrew Wadsley. Although a year old, it was this study that first identified the dioxin errors, as well as others such as the likelihood of significant cost increases . If Gunns was on top of their game, these issues would have been addressed rather than denied.

Prospective financiers are recommended to consider it with respect to understanding areas of required due diligence. Having been closely involved in the due diligence of chemical plants and other resource investments, my professional opinion is that Gunns still has a way to go to demonstrate that all the risks are covered.

Alex Wadsley
MBA B.EC (Hons)

After seeing the ABC 'Difference of Opinion" tonight along with many thinking voters I believe the ALP will lose support since they sided with Howard on the pulp mill. The CFMEU caused the ALP to lose the last election by supporting Howard. They handed the Senate over to Howard. fOR WHAT! A few jobs!!Climate change is with us NOW and the sooner the major parties start to confront this the better. The Greens saw it coming at least a decade ago. I think voters all over Australia will vote on the pulp mill issue like they did on the DAMS issue years ago.
If voters vote Greens 1, ALP 2 then they will still get ALP value but also make a point that the environment is the most import issue not the economy. Clean air is a right and carbon trading is a furphy, a cop out for the business community to continue trading their dirty products so they can continue to pollute the earth's atmosphere. Australia is the greatest per capita of pollution emissions in the whole world. Clean coal is a fallacy a "what if" not a real policy based on concrete evidence- there is none! The ALP have only ever been marginally better on the environment than the liberals, they offer little hope for the future unless the Greens are there to temper them with some common sense on important world changing environment issues.
Sybil

Sybil,

re:
"Clean air is a right and carbon trading is a furphy ... "

The argument about carbon trading deserves more than such offhand dismissal.

See:
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/recent_stuff.html
which provides a very interesting annotated bibliography on climate change and related issues. It is compiled by William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, who provides one of two policy perspective articles in the 13 July issue of AAAS Science Magazine (vol 317 pp 201 - 204).
( see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5835/201
available to subscribers only, unfortunately, but the hard copy ought to be in uni libraries and maybe state libraries by now)

For example,
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/recent_stuff.html
“After Kyoto: Alternative Mechanisms to Control Global Warming,” American Economic Review, May 2006.

This study reviews different approaches to the political and economic control of global public goods like global warming. It compares quantity-oriented control mechanisms like the Kyoto Protocol with price-type control mechanisms such as internationally harmonized carbon taxes. It concludes that price-type approaches using carbon taxes are likely to be more effective and more efficient. For the AER at the meetings, click here. For the longer background paper, click here.
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/kyoto_long_2005.pdf"

Nordhaus and Stern appear, in their Science articles, seem to boil the matter of intragenerational and intergenerational equity to a short equation, what appears to me to be the E=mc^2 of economic theory:

r = nu times g plus rho.

Unfortunately, the assumptions, science and predictive power implicit in this relationship, the "Ramsay equation" ("see F Ramsay, Econ. J. 38, 543 (1928)") may not have firmed up to the same degree, since 1928, as the theory of relativity, or even climate science. (my humble opinion).

The Stern Report and Nordhaus's articles aren't about new climate science or resource use, they're about climate change policy in our current global economic environment.

I expect that what most concerns the current Australian government, and especially its supporters, is the effect of a particular climate change policy outlook on their investments and investors (or more neutrally, stakeholders and their stakes). Which brings us back, indirectly, to the pulp mill and our need for clean air.

The Sydney Morning Herald Freedom of Information Blog had a blog on the secrecy surrounding the royalties paid to the crown for logging old growth timber in NSW state forests.

Information was hard to get but they thought the Harris Diashowa pulp mill in Eden, NSW, was paying 11 cents per ton.

So when you see the timber jinkers laden with logs heading to the woodchipper, that load is worth less than a loaf of bread.

I don't think that the proposed Gunn's Paper Mill has been properly costed - taking into account the environmental costs, the opportunity costs of lost employment in tourism and food production. The people of Tasmania will not be paid fair market value for their lost timber.

"Climate change is with us NOW"
Thats debatable...

"The Greens saw it coming at least a decade ago."
And they still haven't achieved anything...

"I think voters all over Australia will vote on the pulp mill issue like they did on the DAMS issue years ago."
Not this voter...goooo pulp mill

"If voters vote Greens 1"
What sorta crazy would vote this way? They might actually get a seat...*gasp*

"I don't think that the proposed Gunn's Paper Mill has been properly costed - taking into account the environmental costs, the opportunity costs of lost employment in tourism and food production."
I think it has...very comprehensively.